Whatever one thinks of the merits of the Microsoft-Yahoo merger and Google’s immediate and vociferous opposition to it, Ed Felten is 100% right when he says of Google’s actions:
“Complaining has downsides for Google too — a government skeptical of acquisitions by dominant high-tech companies could easily boomerang and cause Google its own antitrust headaches down the road.”
That’s a drum we beat a lot around here at the TLF, but no one in the corporate world seems to listen. On the days their own butts are on the line, they tell us the antitrust authorities are villainous scum that must be defeated at all cost! The next day–when their competitors are in the crosshairs–the antitrust officials are regarded as benevolent knights possessing Solomonic wisdom, and we’re told that we should trust them to guide us to an economic promised land called “perfect competition.”
It’s all a big political game that does nothing more that make a lot of lawyers and consultants very rich.
The Technology Liberation Front is the tech policy blog dedicated to keeping politicians' hands off the 'net and everything else related to technology.